/lit/ - Literature

>>939377
Yes, but in the case of James Joyce, I need those articles and interpretations to even comprehend most of his writing.

As >>939339 stated, good luck getting through most of JJ's oeuvre without a reader's guide. You had a teacher whose job was to explain the significance and give you nice tidy plot summaries along the way. Don't retroactively rewrite your experience of reading JJ to reflect better on yourself. You would have been just as fucking lost as OP is if you had been on your own.

I don't need any critical analysis of Philip K Dick. He was a competent author who layered his novels so that they could be enjoyed on a base level by a wide swathe of the reading public. If you wished to delve further into the themes opened up by _Do Androids Dream..._, you were welcome to, but the book was just as satisfying without.

I enjoy his books on their own. The interpretations offered by literary essayists? They ADD to my enjoyment. They're not necessary for it.

I don't think I missed your point. I think you're just buying into the massive amount of hype and circle jerking around this dude. Oh well.